the Centrist

Its about 1980 something and we’re sitting around the kitchen table; Marilyn busily preparing and lovingly serving a meal as only she can; the boys bantering about something like the newest coach of the Bills (doesn’t anything ever change?); and I trying to allow each his turn in the debate. Suddenly out of the blue, one of them said: “I hope they prove scientifically that Jesus never existed.”
We all stopped. It was one of those moments that is indelibly imprinted in a father’s mind. Marilyn shot me a look, as if to say: “You’re supposed to know what to say in these situations.”
I shot her back a look as if to say: “Huh?”
So we listened to one of the younger make his point. He argued, “If Jesus were proven “scientifically” then it wouldn’t take any faith to believe. But, if He were proven scientifically to be false, then it would take even more faith to believe. I mean then only true believers would believe.”
Wow, from the mouth of babes. So it was with more than passing interest that the headlines of a little known trial in a small Italian town caught my eye. The town, Viterbo, is a village north of Rome, according to Joe Kovacs of Worldnetdaily.com. In that trial Rev. Enrico Righi (Catholic priest) is being sued by his childhood friend and outspoken atheist, Luigi Cascioli (let’s refer to them as Enrico and Luigi) for “deceiving people into thinking Jesus was an actual historical figure”. Luigi is the author of “The Fable of Christ”, a book in which he tries to prove that Jesus never existed. Luigi says that Jesus was mistaken for a little known historical character ‘John of Gamala’ and that His existence cannot be proven scientifically. Enrico counters, ‘Nonsense, Jesus is provable based on the wealth of both pagan and Christian documentation’.
So to the evidence we go … First and foremost are the writings of the New Testament. There are far more New Testament documents, some 36, 289 ( p. 43 “The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowel) than any other literature. This is followed only by the Old Testament documents numbering in the thousands (almost 10,000) and far behind that are Homer’s works numbering in the hundreds. Second is the authenticity of the manuscripts. For years we were told by liberal theologians that the New Testament was written far after the death of Christ. Many schools still teach that the epistles and gospels were fabricated by zealots in the next century. Furthermore, they contend, by that time ‘the legend of Jesus’ was more important than the historical figure. That has been debunked by several archeologic discoveries. All New Testament documents have now been proven to have been written within the lifetime of the authors. Most within a few years of the actual event of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus (see above source). Thirdly, but most importantly, is that the physician Luke, the author of the Book of Acts and the Gospel of Luke, is now looked upon by archeologists and most experts as the most accurate historian of his time (“Rebirth Pains” by WD Bellavia). The Encyclopedia Britannica furthers this point when they bring in the plethora of documents written by early church fathers. “When the textual scholar has examine the manuscripts and the versions, he still has not exhausted the evidence for the New Testament text.” It goes on to say that the early Christian fathers were in agreement with the accuracy of these texts. But, most of all, we cannot discount the testimony of eyewitnesses. John the Apostle states in 1st John 1:1 (NLT) “The one who existed from the beginning is the one we have heard and seen, we saw Him with our own eyes and touched Him with our own hands, He is Jesus Christ, the Word of life.” In 1st Corinthians 15:4-6 the Apostle Paul writes: “He was buried, and he was raised from the dead on the third day, as the scriptures said. He was seen by Peter and then by the twelve apostles. After that, he was seen by more than five hundred of his followers at one time, most of who are still alive, though some have died by now.” So here are eye witness reports of people seeing the resurrected Christ. These letters were immediately circulated to the entire church … don’t you think the skeptics of the day would go out and question these witnesses? This is no small thing, considering that most were tortured to death for this belief. Yet we have not one historic document purporting that an eyewitness recanted his/her story even under the yoke of torture.
Finally there is the recent evidence, the sepulcher of James the ‘brother of Jesus”, the grave of Caiaphas, and the Old Testament code broken by computer science and reported in the book “Yeshua” by Yacov Rambsel. Rambsel reports that Jesus is named throughout the Old Testament as the coming Messiah … with detailed descriptions that defy the imagination. But never mind all this evidence, science will no more be able to objectively prove or disprove the existence of Jesus than it can rationally explain Quantum Physics. Perhaps some day, even skeptics like Luigi will learn, that, paraphrasing the words of a 7 year old boy, some things need to be believed to be seen.